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Relocation plan draws both cheers and jeers from parents
School District seeks sites for relocating Broadway's alternative education program
By Jessica Lyons
Time is ticking away as the San Jose Unified School District scrambles to relocate River Glen Elementary to Broadway High School, find a new home for Broadway's alternative education program, and build a new elementary school at the old River Glen site, all by December 2000.
After months of waiting, however, the district is finally moving forward on the relocation and has okayed the River Glen elementary move--over the protest of several local parents.
Tuesday, May 11 at the school district meeting, officials are slated to discuss the pros and cons of several potential new sites for Broadway's continuation school--which accepts students who've either dropped out or been expelled from other schools--and possibly make a recommendation to the Board of Education, according to Rod Sprecher, director of general services for the district.
"The first thing we need to do is find a location for Broadway," he said. "Everything else hinges on it. Our goal is to have River Glen moved into Broadway by December 2000. This is the plan, this is the direction we're headed."
Possible locations for the Broadway program include: Empire Gardens, property across from San Jose High Academy; a plot of land near Anne Darling Elementary, the former Lincoln Glen School; city-owned land on Taylor Street near the airport; land on the existing campuses of Gunderson and Pioneer high schools; and Willow Glen Ed Park.
After finding a new location for Broadway, the district plans to renovate River Glen, then remodel Broadway to accommodate a dual bilingual immersion program.
"We want to make this a really nice project that the parents and staff can all be proud of," says school board member Carol Meyers.
But some River Glen parents are still dissatisfied with the school board's decision.
"I'm not very pleased, and I'm sure a lot of parents aren't," says Alicia Cortez, who sits on the board of directors for the parent group HABLA. "I've been very involved as a parent in trying to keep the old River Glen site. It doesn't seem that a neighborhood school should be 2-plus miles from their neighborhood."
Besides taking the elementary school out of the neighborhood, the move to Broadway would place serious constraints on the bilingual program's ability to grow, say parents. The building itself is too small to accommodate the list of students waiting to get into the bilingual school's program.
"It would be ideal to allow this school to grow and accommodate all those 200-plus kids who are on the waiting list and now will never get in," Cortez says. "We are a bilingual program and our program has proven to be one of the best, not only to teach English but to retain the Spanish. Two-way immersion is good, but it's not the same as having [the school located in the] same environment, where you have the full support of the teachers and staff."
The decision to move River Glen came after San Jose Unified began planning a policy shift from court-mandated busing back to neighborhood schools, and discovered that by the year 2000, up to 1,500 K-5 students would have nowhere to go. A search for a new school location began, but an affordable location was not found. The district surveyed its options and decided to build a larger school on the River Glen site, and move the immersion program to Broadway.
In January local parents submitted a formal request to remain at their current location, appealing to San Jose Unified's School Board members to fund a different solution. The board denied the appeal.
"The district had to make the decision to go ahead and find a new home for the continuation program and move the immersion program," Sprecher says. "It's a matter of looking at the entire school district and what's in the best interest of all the kids in the district. You listen to community input, but it really comes down to what you have to do to serve the school district."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
